12 Dec
2014
12 Dec
'14
5:13 p.m.
On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 10:20 AM, B Degnan <billdeg at buzz1.com> wrote:
[snip]
Hello group
I'm toying with the idea of writing a simple
word processing package
along
the lines of Wordstar for my Retrochallenge 2015/01 entry.
<snip> > So a little more than a text-editor but only enough to support
simple
formatting and styles (bold, italic, underline for example).
Ideally I'd like to implement a clean, logical design without many
'bells
and whistles' concentrating on the core functionality.
Mark,
As far as formatting to the printer goes, I suggest
you include the
capacity to enter printer codes manually so that you can use most any type
of printer that accepts them. I remember inserting codes into programs
that were used for a specific printer that way. If you have the manual and
given you're talking simple print capabilities you would not need to supply
drivers.
Bill
For low resource AND cognitive overhead, how about using either LaTeX or
HTML tagging, which could then be interpreted in a simple mapping table for
a given printer? By not implementing all of the bells and whistles of
either syntax, one could create something that's lightweight and
sufficiently expressive.
--
Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS
Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School
University of Washington
An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An
engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.